Earlier this year, JetBlue introduced a new series of Flight Etiquette videos that gently mock the egregious behavior of some air travelers — like the person who falls asleep and drools on your shoulder. Or the guy who brings a foul-smelling lunch that stinks up the whole cabin. Or the woman who shares her entire life story over the course of a three-hour flight.

The latest installment of the series addresses the people often called “gate lice” — folks who are so desperate to get on the plane that they crowd around the gate well before their own boarding zone is called. The video made me laugh out loud a few times:

While it’s easy to make fun of these overly aggressive travelers, it’s also worth asking whether this is something the airlines have brought upon themselves. Many fliers are eager to board as early as possible because they know there’s not enough overhead bin space for everyone’s carry-ons, especially now that so many of us are trying to avoid paying extra to check a bag. The fact that JetBlue recently added fees for the first checked bag will probably only make the airline’s gate lice problem worse, not better — no matter how many funny videos it puts out.

While air travelers continue to suffer through carry-on fees and legroom reductions, their furry friends can enjoy spa treatments and splash pools in a new $48 million facility dedicated to the pre-flight comfort of pets.

The New York Post reports that, in 2016, John F. Kennedy Airport in New York will open the Ark Terminal, featuring a 20,000-square-foot facility where dogs can romp, a faux jungle setup where cats can climb trees, and even special stalls for larger animals like horses and cows, complete with showers and hoof-friendly flooring. Massages are on the list of amenities as well.

The Ark will also offer boarding for pets who aren’t actually traveling with their humans. The cost? A mere $100 per night for access to human-sized beds and the use of flat-screen TVs.

It all sounds a little over the top, but an article in Crain’s New York Business notes that the new terminal will serve some very real needs. The current facility used for animals passing through JFK dates back to the 1950s, and the nearest federal quarantine center is two hours away, requiring a tedious and pricey side trip. The new terminal will have a quarantine facility right on site.

Crain’s also reports that animal travel is on the rise; shipments of various creatures through the New York metro area have risen by 28 percent over the past three years.

Between baggage fees, shrinking seats and shoddy service, flying makes many travelers pretty cranky these days — so why not take a look back at what life in the skies used to be like?

The following vintage airline commercials offer that trip back in time, although in some cases it seems like not much has changed. (Yes, even in the 70s and 80s fliers were bemoaning crowded airports and lack of service in economy class.) Have a look — and a laugh!

First up is a funny Southern Airways ad from the 1970s that lampoons the difference between first class and coach:

Peter Sellers plays out every cheesy (and sleazy) Italian stereotype in this 1970s ad for TWA:

I’m not sure anyone’s ever been so thrilled to land in Kansas City as this 1980s Eastern Air Lines passenger:

I’m cheating a little with this next one, which is from the mid-2000s and therefore doesn’t really count as a “vintage” commercial — but it too features a now-defunct airline (Continental):

We first got wind of the impending bad news last year, and now it’s come to pass: JetBlue will no longer include one free checked bag with the cost of all its flights.

The discount carrier has rolled out a new fare structure, effective today, that offers varying baggage and other fees depending on how much you pay for your flight. If you book the cheapest available fare category, known as Blue, you’ll have to pay $20 or $25 for your first checked bag on most itineraries (it varies based on where you pay it — Web check-in, kiosk or airport counter). The second bag costs $35 in this fare category.

If you pay a little more for the Blue Plus fare, you’ll get one checked bag free, with the second costing $35. If you want to bring two complimentary checked bags, you’ll have to pony up for either the Blue Flex or Mint fare. (The latter is only available on cross-country flights.)

You can still get a free checked bag in any fare category if you’re headed to one of the following destinations: Santo Domingo, Santiago, Port-au-Prince, Port of Spain, Kingston, Cartagena, Medellin, Bogota, Lima or Mexico City.

Other differences between the fare categories include cancellation and change fees, which are highest for Blue passengers, a little lower for Blue Plus and free for Blue Flex. The full fare chart is below (click to see a larger version):

We did a few test searches to check out the fare differences between categories. On a flight between New York and Chicago, the Blue Plus fare was $15 more in each direction than the Blue fare, while the Blue Flex fare was $100 more each way than the cheapest option. That means it would actually be cheaper to book the Blue Plus fare than to buy the Blue fare and check a single bag.

When we changed the itinerary to San Diego – Fort Lauderdale, however, that wasn’t the case; the difference was $30 – $31 each way between Blue and Blue Plus and $100 each way between Blue and Blue Flex.

At a time when more than three ounces of liquid could get you into trouble with the TSA, it seems absurd that loaded guns are legal at many airports throughout the United States.

Earlier this month, as reported by Yahoo! Travel, a man brought a loaded semiautomatic rifle into the Hartsfield-Jackson airport in Atlanta in what seemed to be a cry for attention when he was there to drop his daughter off for a flight. According to laws in Georgia, he was within his rights to do so, but that didn’t stop police from questioning him or travelers who spotted the weapon from complaining about him.

According to website Florida Carry, 44 U.S. states allow individuals with permits to carry loaded guns into unrestricted airport areas. It’s acceptable as long as nobody attempts to take them through security. (Individual municipalities and airports have the authority to put more strict regulations in place to ban firearms from airports completely.)

A law is one thing, but good judgement is another, particularly at a sensitive place like an airport where edgy travelers — including children — can be easily spooked by that sort of display. Do you think an airport is the place to make a political statement by bringing a gun? Be sure to share your thoughts below.

From airplane seats to legroom, everything about the in-air experience is shrinking — except the price. The airlines’ newest recommendation to free up crowded overhead bin space is — drumroll — shrink the carry-on… again.

Last June I wrote about how changing carry-on regulations caught me by surprise just before I left for a trip with a brand-new carry-on suitcase. This time, according to a Yahoo News article, the International Air Transport Association is suggesting an even smaller “optimal” bag size of 21.5 inches tall by 13.5 inches wide by 7.5 inches deep — skimming the already-slim current standards of 22 inches by 14 inches by 9 inches enforced by major air carriers such as American, Delta and United.

As it stands, nine international airlines — Lufthansa, Cathay Pacific, Emirates, Qatar Airways, Caribbean Airlines, China Eastern, China Southern, Avianca and Azul — have adopted the svelte new carry-on dimensions; no U.S. carriers have signed on … yet.

This new guideline won’t immediately be enforced — if at all — across all airlines, but as the article suggests, the smaller uniform measurement will help to “iron out inconsistencies,” according to IATA. The organization further claims that this size is not a new maximum, but a strong suggestion. Spinning it as a way to know for sure what the acceptable carry-on measurements will be (once and for all?), the organization seems to ignore that these supposedly acceptable measurements have been tweaked multiple times in the past few years, leading to countless checked-bag fees and hundreds of dollars in new “conforming” luggage for fliers.

Would you settle for a slightly smaller carry-on bag size if it meant you could keep using the same suitcase from here on? Personally, I’m perfectly happy with the one I’ve got, and will take my chances. Let us know how you feel in the comments.

We’ve all tried to dodge the airlines’ ever-present fees at least once or twice — maybe you’ve overstuffed your carry-on so you didn’t have to check a bag, or packed your own headphones so you didn’t need to shell out five bucks for the ones offered in flight. But a British student recently went far beyond that, legally changing his name because it was less expensive than paying Ryanair’s fee to correct a booking error.

The Guardian reports that Adam Armstrong made the change after his girlfriend’s stepfather booked him a flight to Ibiza with the wrong surname. (“Her stepdad got my name from Facebook but I had put it as Adam West as a joke, because he was the actor who played Batman on TV,” Armstrong told the Guardian.) Ryanair wanted 220 GBP (about $337 USD) in administrative fees to change the name on the booking to match the one on Armstrong’s passport.

Armstrong balked at the cost, calling it “completely ridiculous,” and instead decided to change his name legally (at no charge) and expedite a new passport for 103 GBP (about $158 USD). Gotta admire his creativity!

Ryanair is hardly the only airline to charge steep fees for making changes to an existing booking. Delta charges anywhere from $200 to $450, depending on where you’re flying; American quotes a range of fees from $200 to $750(!) for any “voluntary change to ticket made prior to day of travel.” One notable exception: Southwest, which does charge any applicable fare difference for a rebooking but does not assess a separate administrative change fee.

Most airlines, including Ryanair, will give you a 24-hour grace period to correct errors.

In a statement published by the Guardian, Ryanair explains, “A name change fee is charged in order to discourage and prevent unauthorised online travel agents from ‘screenscraping’ Ryanair’s cheapest fares and reselling them on to unwitting consumers at hugely inflated costs.'”

As part of the eternal struggle to speed up the process of getting fliers onto planes, Delta Air Lines is trying a new strategy: preloading carry-on bags for its passengers. According to USA Today, the carrier will be offering a complimentary Early Valet service on select flights this summer, which will involve having airline employees take passengers’ carry-ons at the gate and put them into the overhead bins nearest their assigned seats.

The airline’s hope is that its employees will be more efficient in loading the plane than passengers would, helping ensure a timelier departure. USA Today reports that the airline has previously tested this strategy and found “some reduction in boarding time.”

The theory makes sense. After all, how often have you seen fellow passengers holding up the line while they heave and ho to get weighty bags into the bin? And then there are the fliers who force others to find other spots for their bags because they put their rolling suitcases in sideways instead of wheels first, taking up twice as much space. Let’s face it: Airline employees are almost guaranteed to be better at loading a plane than we passengers are.

The question, though, is whether the process of taking people’s bags at the gate will cancel out most of the time saved during the actual boarding procedure. Frequent flier expert Gary Leff, quoted in the USA Today article, also raises a good point: “‘This has the potential to come across as a nice, high-end service,’ Leff said, ‘but I’m skeptical that it will go mainstream’ because of labor costs.”

What would you give to feel less stuffy after your next flight? You may start to feel the difference soon, thanks to a 17-year-old high school junior from Canada. Raymond Wang recently won the top prize at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for his innovative solution to reduce the spread of pathogens on airplanes, while promoting fresh air to passengers.

According to a story in the Washington Post, Wang began to think about disease transmission on airplanes after the ebola outbreak last year. Although ebola isn’t transmitted through the air, many other contagious diseases are, and this spurred his research into cabin airflow.

Current airflow is spread down and across the rows by “two, large turbulent swirls,” according to Wang in the Post article. With the addition of fin-shaped devices into a plane’s air inlets, airflow is redirected more efficiently to each passenger in what Wang calls a “personalized ventilation zone.” Check out a video simulation of the difference:

The cost-benefit ratio of Wang’s new airflow system is a no-brainer. Installing the fins would cost approximately $1,000 per plane with overnight installation, and is estimated to increase fresh air to the cabin by 190 percent — reducing the concentration of airborne germs and pathogens 55 times over.

For his idea, Wang took home a $75,000 cash prize and has filed for a patent. Let’s hope it’s put to good use.

Unless you’re a first-time flier and everything is shiny and new, it can be awfully hard to pay attention to the safety video onboard your flight; either you’ve heard it all before, you assume it’s common sense or you’re breathing into a bag because you’re already that nervous to fly.

In the airline’s latest installment, shot in stunning surf locations such as Malibu, Australia’s Gold Coast and Raglan and Piha, New Zealand, “Air New Zealand’s Safety Safari” showcases world surfing champions Gabriel Medina of Brazil, Australian Mick Fanning and American surfers Laird Hamilton, Alana Blanchard and Anastasia Ashley as they breezily guide you through in-flight safety.

If you’re a fan of beautiful, smiling people running around world-famous beaches and instructing you with charming accents, then you won’t be bored. However, because they are beautiful people running and surfing around (at times shirtless) on world-famous beaches in charming accents, you also might be too distracted to glean the important safety information. Now if only emergency lighting on airplanes were as enchanting as paper lanterns…

In conjunction with the Safety Safari video, Air New Zealand is hosting a contest giving away a Malibu surf lesson for two with legendary surfer Laird Hamilton, roundtrip air to Los Angeles, a five-night stay in Santa Monica and a five-day rental car.